1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer hardware and software systems for manufacturing an assembly, and more particularly to a method and system for automatically isolating suspect items in a manufacturing or assembly environment.
2. Background Art
Embodiments of the present invention seek to improve upon prior art methods for tracking and isolating suspect items in a manufacturing or assembly environment (e.g. defective parts or assemblies, mis-builds, recall items, etc.).
Prior art methods for tracking and isolating suspect items, although generally effective, are manually-implemented and typically result in more items being isolated or recalled than necessary to ensure that truly suspect items are isolated from manufacturing/assembly, delivery or sale. Such an over-breadth in the scope of suspect items, however, results in unnecessary cost and effort associated with scrapping, re-manufacturing or recalling suspect items.
Prior art methods lack aspects of the present invention which enable isolation of a more accurate and narrow scope of suspect items. In a perfect implementation of the present invention, only items that are truly suspect are isolated from the manufacturing/assembly process. Of course, perfection is not always possible.
In one prior art method, for example, a particular machining operation may be divided among multiple machining stations, without a means to track which items went through which machining station. In the event that one of the machining stations was found to be defective, plant floor personnel would have to manually “round-up” and scrap, re-manufacture or recall all items that were machined at any of the machining stations. Due to a lack of accurate item tracking, this is the only way to ensure that items which are truly suspect (i.e. the items that were machined at the defective machining station) are isolated from the remainder of the manufacturing/assembly process.
In large-scale production with high item complexity (model variation), the impact of such an over-broad scope of suspect items can be very significant. In the automotive industry, for example, such a scenario in an early manufacturing process (e.g., engine machining) could result in a very large scope of engine assemblies or automobiles that must be scrapped or recalled—even though only a very small percentage of those items are truly defective.
Embodiments of the present invention seek to remove the guesswork and over-breadth associated with prior art methods of isolating suspect items in manufacturing and assembly environments.